


and at your feet i lay my burden

by infinite_wonders



Category: Star Wars - All Media Types, Star Wars Episode VII: The Force Awakens (2015)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Post-Canon, Anxiety, Emotional Hurt/Comfort, Fluff, Fluff and Angst, Gen, Getting Together, Hurt!Finn, Hurt/Comfort, M/M, Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder - PTSD, Protective Poe, Self-Discovery, emotionally wrecked Finn
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2016-02-08
Updated: 2016-02-08
Packaged: 2018-05-19 00:02:16
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 7,527
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/5948251
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/infinite_wonders/pseuds/infinite_wonders
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Finn has a hard time reconciling who he was made to be, who he is now, and who he will be in the future.</p>
            </blockquote>





	and at your feet i lay my burden

**Author's Note:**

> Back before Starkiller base was blown sky high, Phasma only said that FN-2187 had never had behavioral problems, that he’d never once had to be reconditioned. But before he was FN-2187, he was someone else and while that someone else was never the model soldier that the First Order wanted, he was the one that they broke.
> 
> (AKA That one fic where Finn _doesn’t_ react well to throwing off a lifetime of training and conditioning within a few days-- even for a pretty face (or two)-- and a lot of things have a lot of consequences that nobody’s quite prepared to handle. Except maybe Poe, because he ~~loves his boyfriend too much~~ is too chill for Finn’s shit to faze him. )
> 
> (Except for how he worries even as he deals with Finn’s shit, but that’s neither here nor there.)
> 
> double AKA:
> 
> Me: I have written a Finn AU centric fic with Background Headcanon!  
> Everyone else: You fucked up a perfectly good character is what you did. Look at him. He’s got ~~anxiety~~ ~~PTSD~~. Both. He's got both.
> 
> (I did some research. I did. I just didn't have too much time to do a lot of research TT^TT. Imagine that all discrepancies fall under the AU umbrella. Also, I love hurting my cinnamon rolls so their cinnamon roll boyfriends/girlfriends can provide comfort. I am a god awful human being like that. Pls don't eat my face over this.)

***

So here’s the thing. 

Before he was Finn, before he became a hero and an all around Good Guy™, before he was an actual person with an actual identity and an actual life-- with real, actual friends-- he was FN-2187, Stormtrooper of the First Order, Officer track, and Willing Cannon Fodder as necessary for the Cause. 

He was FN-2187 who, along with his peers, had been discouraged, so to speak, from ever making real, human connections, who had never been allowed much in the way of any contact, physical or otherwise. Who, at age eight, had been forced to take training courses where they’d locked him away in solitary confinement for days and weeks at a time, because not needing other people was supposed to make him stronger, better, because another person’s touch could mean death and wouldn’t he rather be alive to fight for the Cause when he wasn’t throwing it away in its name, instead?

FN-2187 was supposed to be an island, and his worth was measured by his dedication to the First Order, his willingness to fight and kill in its name and to die for it as the need arose. He was a Stormtrooper before he was anything else, and his loyalty belonged to no one person, but rather to the collective. Attachment had been deemed for the weak, emotion was for the unworthy, and any time he had been suspected of any such inadequacies...well, reconditioning is what they had called it. 

(He still has screaming nightmares about blood and pain and please, stop, I’ll do anything, it hurts, of making the conscious decision to rip out the parts of himself that had mattered because the other option wasn’t something he’d survive again.)

As a Proud and Willing Member of the First Order, he’d had these things-- ideas, reactions-- trained into him, beaten into him, hell, literally carved into him at one point, over and over again, until it had burrowed itself into his bones and become more a part of him than his own designation, until he’d learned not to reach out, had figured out that all it would end in was a world of pain and misery-- until he’d flinched and broken ~~Slips’~~ FN-2003’s hand for gripping his shoulder in thanks, after one of the many times he’d rescued the bastard, and hadn’t flinched later, when ~~Zeroes~~ FN-2000 had broken his in turn, when he’d reached out to comfort.

Granted, some of these instincts had been held at bay while he’d been running for his life and constantly scared out of his mind-- when he’d seen a young girl just like him, who’d been through hell and who had somehow come out the other end better (unlike him, who’d mostly come out in enough shambles that he hadn’t been able to put together so much as a patchwork of his former self), when he’d been so fucking relieved to see a pilot in an orange jumpsuit coming towards him with an incredulous but happy grin on his miraculously intact face and a glib comment about jackets, for example. Not to mention that he seems to genuinely like these people, from the bottom of the place where he’s sure he’d once had a heart, before the order got to it and proceeded to take it from him.

But it’s still there waiting for him when the adrenaline is gone and the fight is, however temporarily, over. It lurks under his skin, waiting to shred Finn to pieces on its way back out to remake FN-2187 and destroy everything that he’s worked so hard to build.

After the fact is when it really shows, that he’s not used to touching people, or being people, or being near people and seeing anything other than the white helmet that signified their status. Having this much contact with the world outside of the one he’d lived in for so, so long is making his brain metaphorically and, maybe, eventually, literally leak out of his ears. Being the Good Guy is nice and all, but he feels like he hasn’t stopped sprinting since he started all those days ago, and the little things that he’s been able to ignore so far, the things that jangle against his instincts and make his teeth clench without his express permission, are finally starting to catch up. 

People are hard, mostly because he’s never been given the chance to be one of them and none of this was included in the How to Be a Normal Person When We’ve Been Your Humanity Stripped From You For Literal Years™ manual that the Order had provided him with all those years ago, in a valiant if mostly futile attempt to get him situated for future undercover work.

The real issue is that he’d been FN-2187 of the First Order for a whole hell of a lot longer than he’s been Finn of the Resistance, and FN-2187 had always been a dangerous fucking asset in the field. Add in a lifetime of negative conditioning and honestly, that’s probably why he’s not so surprised to find himself flinching back from a nameless trainee in the middle of a spar, before putting him in a chokehold and attempting to snap his neck.

Not two weeks after coming out of a coma to worried faces and being unable to do anything but smile, after being told that one of the only friends he has in the world left him with a kiss to the forehead and a promise to return, a lifetime of training kicks right back in, as though it had never been gone at all.

In the end, the trainee is lucky, because even FN-2187 had always balked at unnecessary killing of the innocent masses.

As it is, it takes almost everything he has in him to let the other man go without injury, because empathetic he has always been, enough that he would have been weak in the eyes of the Order, had they known. But he’s also never lost an official, Order sanctioned fight, either, and the Order had never considered anyone a victor if they hadn’t caused at least enough damage for there to be a week’s worth of corresponding recovery.

The trainee has a brush with death and all he gets are bruises.

The fight, the real one, starts off with FN-2187, but it ends with Finn letting him go and running the hell away.

***

Later, when the rumors inevitably spread and Poe inevitably comes banging on his door-- when he looks Finn FN-2187 Finn over with concern blatant on his face and asks him if everything is ok, Finn can’t look him in the eye. 

However. as it turns out, he also can’t lie to the man who’d given him his jacket, a name, and unquestioning friendship all in one fell swoop. “I don’t know,” he says quietly, his line of sight somewhere around the ancient scuff marks on the floor and the dirt he’s tracked in from days worth of walking in and out, occasionally drifting towards the scratches on his boots before going back the ground.

It’s all he can offer, and it’s more honest than he means to be.

Poe doesn’t say anything, at first. 

Instead, he walks into the room that Finn’s been assigned, eyes the three things that qualify as all of the personal items that Finn owns, one of which is actually technically still Poe’s jacket, and sighs. “Wanna tell me what happened?” he asks after a few minutes, and it’s all Finn can do to stand where he is instead of getting the hell out of dodge. He’s got that feeling again, like he should cut his losses before things go really south, leave before Poe finds out that Finn isn’t really, actually Finn-- that he’s FN-2187 pretending to be someone he’s really, really not even if he really, really wants to be.

“I can’t,” he chokes out as a compromise because lying to Poe is still not a thing, breath coming out in quiet gasps as he fights down the sense of impending doom, “Please, I can’t.” 

For all that everything about this brave new world of his is against every one of his ingrained ideals, he can’t have it taken away from him either-- even he doesn’t deserve it, even if he should go back to the Order to do what he’d been trained for since as far back as he can remember.

Finn knows he’s being greedy, wanting to keep things as they are even if he can’t make himself quite fit, even if he can’t make anything fit around him, and he knows that telling Poe would likely ruin everything. He doesn’t want to lose another of his friends, doesn’t want to have Poe not be able to look at him anymore because he can’t live up to the person Poe thinks that he is-- has been lead to believe that he is because Finn is a fucking liar.

Liar, liar, liar. 

Unfortunately, he’s a liar who’s also desperate to keep what little he’s built.

Something of the panic he’s feeling must shine through on his face, because Poe takes mercy on him, sighs again before reaching out and putting his hand on the back of Finn’s neck, squeezing gently in a way that somehow comes across as reassuring rather than as a threat. “Hey, shh, calm down,” he says, voice calm and sure as the day he’d looked Finn in the eye and told him that he could fly anything, “We’ll figure it out.”

In a turn of events that throws Finn for a loop, he actually feels himself calming down just a little, finds himself latching on to Poe’s words with a frantic sort of belief that Poe can and will make things better.

For the first time in a long, long while, since before the whole mess with running from the Order and after the mess with Starkiller base and Kylo Ren, he feels somewhat grounded.

In an act that defies all instinct, he lets Poe draw him closer, and in an act that pushes him out of every comfort zone he knows, he let’s himself bury his face against Poe’s shoulder, let’s himself cling for a few minutes.

He doesn’t even flinch when Poe pulls him into a tight hug and whispers it again, against his ear, his voice rough with, with something. “We’ll figure it out.”

***

Somehow, inbetween having whatever stands in for a too well trained former stormtroopers version of an emotional breakdown, and getting what is possibly only the third hug of his entire life, Finn misses being moved from his assigned quarters to Poe’s.

By the time he notices, he’s already been bundled up on Poe’s (contraband, has to be) couch with a warm, comforting drink (from where, exactly? Finn is pretty sure the mess hall is on the further side of the base?) and, if Poe’s smug face is anything go by, it’s too late for Finn to do anything about it.

“This way I can keep a better eye on you,” Poe says, all charming smiles which, well.

Finn is still stressed out, still so close to the edge, and he can’t help the full body flinch at the implications there-- that he’s too volatile, too much of a loose cannon, that he needs to watched and measured and he can still see the look on Phasma’s face as she asks him to turn in his blaster to be checked. The urge to run comes back full force even as something shatters, because if he’s forced to stay here, in close proximity to the one person still left on base who’d seen his best and worst as Finn rather than FN-2187 and would be able to figure everything out, it would only be a matter of time. Except where would be go? What would he--

“Hey, hey no. Come on Finn, come back to me.”

He blinks and comes back to warm hands on his face and brown eyes filled with no little amount of worry. There’s a broken mug on the floor, pieces of ceramic lying in a pool of brownish liquid and the room is shaking. 

“That’s it. Come on, you’re doing great. Just keep on breathing, ok?”

No wait though, that’s not the room shaking that’s-- him? He’s shaking? But why? It’s cold in the room, granted, but not so cold that he should be shivering like he’s been stuck out in subarctic temperatures with no heat source to go with it. Plus he’s-- he looks down really quick to assess-- he’s got a blanket covering him. He’s so damned sleepy, to boot.

“Hey, there he is,” Poe says when Finn finally manages to blink up at him, after what feels like a long time and a whole lot of effort. “This is why,” he continues, voice soft as he moves one of his hands from Finn’s cheeks and up to his forehead, as though he were checking to see if he were running a fever, “this is exactly why we’re going to bunk together for a bit.”

“Can’t have you doing this when you’re by yourself, now can we? Not when I can do something to help.”

He sounds so sure and so affectionate, like he’s just come up with the perfect plan to make all this go away, to make all this right and it had been his absolute privilege to put that sort of effort in for Finn. 

Finn’s tongue feels like it’s suddenly turned into the densest material on the planet, and there’s just enough of a blur to his vision that it’s on the right side of concerning. He’s exhausted, his muscles feel like jelly, and he’s no real authority on these things but that blur suddenly feels a lot like tears. All of a sudden spending an extended period of time with Poe, being observed or not, is the only thing keeping him sane.

So he nods his acceptance and ducks his head so both he and Poe can pretend that he’s not as weak as he actually is.

By the end of the day, he finds himself moved in, luggage and baggage and nightmares and all-- by the time midnight rolls around, Finn’s already cycled through enough shit that when he wakes up the next morning and Poe still hasn’t kicked him out, he finally starts to relax.

He’s too busy alternating between relief and apology (about keeping Poe up, about taking over his life, about everything else inbetween) to notice the concerned looks that Poe keeps throwing his way. He also doesn’t notice when the concern morphs into stony resolve.

This is probably why Poe’s next move in his grand plan to Keep Finn Safe, Happy, and Sane takes Finn, the actual recipient of said plan, by surprise.

***

After four nights of listening to Finn scream himself hoarse, Poe finally gives in and pushes his way onto Finn’s bed, pulling him close and letting him gasp against his chest, running his fingers through Finn’s hair and down the nape of his neck in an instinctive effort to provide comfort.

(Surprise! Although, to be fair, Finn is too grateful for the comfort to question it.)

He does the same thing on nights five and six, and he doesn’t even bother to go to his own bed on night seven, climbing into Finn’s instead with a grumble about twin sized beds being too small for one grown man, much less two of them. He then proceeds to arrange Finn to his liking (Finn’s head on his shoulder, his arm keeping Finn close) and, when Finn asks, he just shrugs. “Might as well just start off this way,” he says and snuggles down, “and it helps you sleep better when you’re bunking down with someone.”

Finn thinks that there’s a difference between bunking down and whatever it is they’re doing and he’d totally bring it up, but he also hasn’t slept this well since this whole mess began. Poe is really warm and he’s got a dubious honor of being both a ridiculously comfortable pillow and the world’s best human safety blanket. Literally. 

He’s not so self-sacrificial, or stupid enough really, that he’d give up something so freely offered.

As it is, there are days when Finn thinks that Poe’s heartbeat is the only thing that keeps him sane, the only thing letting him get a precious few hours of sleep every night. Poe is more than happy to oblige and indulge Finn, even though Finn will never, ever ask, or even actually cop to curling a little closer than he normally would.

Frankly, Finn isn’t ready to walk away from that, even if he thinks it would be better for everyone.

On the tenth night, when he walks into Poe’s (“It’s yours too now, Finn.”) quarters, the two twin beds have disappeared, to be replaced by a single full sized one.

Finn knows when he’s got a good thing going and is most definitely not going to be the one to rock the starfighter here, is what he’s saying. 

He’s still having way more bad days than good-- he’ll take whatever he can get at this point to keep himself going.

***

Before he had been old enough to know better, before he had been anything but a child with dreams for a future that he wasn’t allowed to have, FN-2187 had taking comfort in think about what he could have been if he hadn’t been forced into kidnapped for recruited into the Order. Of course, each time he'd wanted such things for himself, it had been taken from him, ripped out of his mind and heart by people who had taken too much pleasure in breaking a too young boy, until he'd stopped thinking of such things, at all. Still, initially, when he’d been a hell of a lot more naive, he’d daydream about it every chance he got.

Now, especially, that he's got a little bit of time to consider things, he can’t help but wonder.

Maybe he could've been a pilot, like Poe, or a mechanic, like Rey (although he could do without the being abandoned and lonely for most of his life part, for this different version of himself). Or maybe he could've been a scientist, or a counselor-- a musician, a merchant, a traveler.

Anything other than what he is now, because nobody can look at Finn and claim to want to be like him-- because as far as everyone else is concerned, Finn shouldn’t be worth anything at all. Which is fair, because he honestly isn’t sure that the chance for him to actually be someone hadn’t passed all those years ago, hadn’t been lost with the last of his innocence in a small prison cell in the darkest part of base, where they’d broken him and kept right on breaking him until he’d actually stayed that way. 

He doesn’t want anybody to want that.

Besides, it’s a well known fact that the First Order has always been fond of stripping people of their identities, their hopes and dreams and everything that makes them who they are, until they aren’t actually people anymore, because people are messy but mindless drones are much more easily controlled. Finn had once been one of the First Order.

Why would anyone think that he’d actually escaped any of that enough to be worth emulating?

(Things are different now, though. He’s got people who care about him as a person. He’s got Poe and Jessika and the rest of the crew looking at him like a person rather than an asset and he knows that, wherever Rey is, she loves him in the best way that she can. That probably means more than anything in the world.)

(It also means that he’s able to fight for things, for himself, because he’s got them to support him through it.)

(He just doesn’t think there’s a whole lot left to fight for, is all.) 

(Still, he’s always wanted to be someone and, now that he’s got a chance, he’s got to try, if nothing else.)

(Besides, they’d all collectively kick his ass if he didn’t at least make an effort. Poe will do it literally in house since they live together now, Rey will find a way to whoop his butt all the way from whatever backwater planet she’s found herself on, and Jessika and the rest of them will take things a little too far and maybe literally kick his ass.)

(He really does love them.)

***

Speaking of-- friends? People who, for whatever reason, seem to have taken a shine to him and have his best interests at heart? Waking up one morning and realizing that he’s got not one, not two, but several of those makes him a feel lot like he’d felt when he and Poe had crash landed on Jakku all those weeks ago-- dazed and vaguely but strongly panicky. Because here’s the thing, he’s never really had any of those and now that he does, he doesn’t know how to handle himself.

Sure he’d had ~~FN-2003~~ Slips, and ~~FN-2000~~ Zeroes, and ~~FN-2199~~ Nines, sort of-- because while they’d never been all that close, they’d also been a unit since they were old enough to be in one. Plus, the First Order had never been the type of organization to preach about the virtues of friendship and, while it had still hurt to watch his team die one by one, he’d only ever been as fond of them as he’d ever been taught to be. He can say with some certainty that they’d felt just about the same about him, because that’s all they’d ever known, the whole emotionally stunted lot of them. 

Point is, he’s had comrades, teammates, and the occasional acquaintance-- nothing more, or less-- and he’s always liked it that way, now that he thinks about it, for a whole variety of reasons. The main one being, of course, the age old ideal wherein the less you know, the less you care, the less paralyzed by anxiety you can be. Or something.

So suddenly having people to genuinely care about, people who put their lives risk on a day to day basis that he can’t always protect, well. It leaves him in a weird state of restless agitation, to say the least. At least with his unit, they’d always been able to have each other’s backs but here, he doesn’t even go on missions yet much less on missions with these people.

It doesn’t help that, by the time he’d woken up from the coma and had finally become coherent enough to let loose into semi-polite society, Rey, whom he’d probably imprinted on like a baby duck, had already disappeared. They’d told him that she’d gone to find Luke Skywalker, because they’d managed to finish the map between R2D2 and BB-8 but even knowing that little bit of information, even knowing that she’ll come back eventually, doesn’t help. Because, in a very short span of time, she’d become very, very important to him and the idea of her being out there without him there to back her up, on the very few occasions where she needs it of course, is enough to give him palpitations.

Add to that the fact that he has to watch everyone else he has left to care about, like Poe and Jessika and Snap, all go off and fly their missions without him for cover, and he’s about ready to scream.

Which, granted, they’re all better fighters than him-- way more experienced and much better trained and, without a doubt, every single one of them knows what they’re doing and why they’re doing it. They don’t need him at all, especially not as he is now because he’s injured still and much more of a liability than any kind of help. Still. Even Finn knows how to throw himself into the line of fire if it means his teammate lives and he’s not going to be there to do it. Finn--

\--can’t. He just can’t.

Thankfully, Poe makes things a little better-- is there to wake him up when he has screaming nightmares about flaming starfighters burning their way through the atmosphere of some miserable wreck of a planet, when he dreams about Rey’s voice accusing him of abandoning her to her fate and aren’t they friends? Why would he let her go alone when he knows how close Kylo Ren came to killing her? How he’s going to try again? Now she’s dead and it’s all his fault. His fault, his fault, his fault.

He’s there to pull Finn into a (warm, wonderful) hug when Finn’s having a worse day than usual, or even when he’s having a good day, actually, and he takes some time off from missions to flit around like a particularly attractive human shaped hovercraft when he finds out just what Finn is really struggling with. Well, one of the many, many things that he’s struggling with.

“It’s the least I can do,” he says, looking and sounding particularly earnest, “After all, you saved my life once.”

Which honestly doesn’t make as much sense as Poe thinks it does.

“I’m not about to be tortured for information and then viciously executed,” Finn responds drily, even as he wages an internal war against his own expressions so that the relief doesn’t show too blatantly on his face. “Also, I only saved you because I needed a pilot, remember?”

Poe just gives him a Look, like he sees through Finn’s shit and is judging him for it, and then waves his hand around, as though he’s swatting Finn’s concerns like the extremely inconsequential things they are. “Whatever,” he says, “You need me to be around. I can do that for you.”

“Now come on. I think the mess closes down in like, an hour and I’m freaking starving. Hanging out with you all day and doing next to nothing is hard work, you know.” He smiles, that mischievous smile that means that he’s made a joke that he thinks is funny.

Finn flips him off with a startled laugh (which he should stop, because if he doesn’t _Poe_ won’t stop and Finn should not be encouraging shitty jokes), and they head out.

He walks close enough to Poe that their hands brush with every step.

Poe doesn’t move away.

***

As though the myriad of issues that make up his current mental landscape weren’t enough, actually just being Finn is-- hard to get used to, for lack of better phrasing. Or, at least, it’s hard outside of high risk circumstances and emergencies and action reaction, because FN-2187 or Finn, he knows who he is when there’s a battle to fight. But outside of that, it’s like his brain just can’t reconcile him for himself, no matter how much he reminds himself that new him is _actual_ him, now. 

Thing is, he’s just not used to having a ’him’ at all, much less multiple ‘hims’ to distinguish between. He’s never even had a name before and even now, he catches himself not responding when people call for him, catches himself looking around as though there’s another Finn running around who’d played a part in saving the galaxy and had spent a couple of weeks in a coma as a result.

He also keeps expecting to hear Eight-Seven every time anyone so much as looks in his general direction and he doesn’t know whether it’s a relief or a disappointment that it never comes.

Probably a mix of both, if he’s being honest, because here’s the thing.

He’d been good at being FN-2187, except for the part where he wouldn’t kill innocent people and had defected from the Order which had rebirthed him, repurposed him for a greater purpose. Which, granted, could be considered Treason of the Highest Order in some circles but, outside of that, he’d been freaking excellent at being FN-2187. 

The problem is that he’s nowhere near as good at being Finn, is terrible at it, in fact. 

Poe can deny all of this til he’s blue in the face but, at the end of the day, Finn just hadn’t been raised to be people and learning those behaviors isn’t nearly as easy as everybody makes it seem. No matter how hard he tries, Finn doesn’t feel calm and collected, the way Poe is with literally every situation thrown in his face. He doesn’t feel brave, the way Jessika is whenever she follows Poe into a mission, knowing that people are depending on her and not flinching in the least.

He’s not smart the way that Temmin ‘Call me Snap!’ Wexler is and he’s not literally perfect, the way that General Organa is-- he’s not organized like the resistance which, admittedly, is more of an organization than a single entity but it’s comprised of many entities who contribute in a way that Finn just doesn’t seem to be capable of and it’s more disheartening than Finn would like to admit.

Even Rey is better at being people than he is and she’s had an upbringing just as shitty as his own, if not potentially worse in its own way, because even when he hadn’t been people, he’d had fellow stormtroopers and others like himself to be around, even if not necessarily in camaraderie. He doesn’t know how he’d deal with being literally alone for an extended period of time, much less for most of his life. But that’s a tangent for another day, when Rey is around for him to smother a little, potentially with the fluffiest blankets on base.

Point is, that Finn just can’t be people, no matter how hard he tries, no matter how much he wants to be.

It probably doesn’t help that he keeps expecting to be reconditioned. Years of fear-- of memories of cramped, dark cells and a distorted voice asking him what he is rather than who even as they hurt him and hurt him until he’s as blank as they want him to be-- dictate that he shouldn’t try to be anyone that the Order does not want him to be. 

But he’s supposed to be better than that now, better than the bile rising in his throat whenever he gives up stormtrooper training regiments and whatever trade secrets that the First Order had seen fit to make him privy to. Better than the shivers that rack his frame sometimes, the nightmares he gets at the thought of ever seeing the inside of an Order base, ever again. He’s supposed to be able to smile and greet people everyday and be brave, he’s supposed to be able to eat with the people he wants to eat with, and make plans for the evenings when there’s a lull in the action.

Just--- he’s supposed to be better and he’s just not doing it. Who the fuck is Finn even supposed to be if he can’t even manage that much? If he can’t even get his shit together enough for that?

Of course, when he says as much one late night, in a fit of slightly loopy, half asleep frustration, Poe just laughs, in that kind, well meaning way of his. It vibrates through his chest and across Finn’s skin and, as pleasant and comfortable as it feels, Finn is too busy being grouchy to really appreciate it.

“That’s sort of the point,” Poe says, once he’s done yucking it up at Finn’s expense while simultaneously avoiding most of Finn’s flailing in the general direction of his person. “It’s not about what you’re supposed to be or what you should be doing. It’s who you’re supposed to be, right?”

Finn clenches his jaw a little and glares up at Poe as best as he can while still keeping most of his face right next to Poe’s heart. “What is that even supposed to mean?” he grits out, just in case Poe can’t tell that he’s displeased from how hard he’s digging his chin into Poe’s chest.

Poe smiles. Finn can tell because his teeth glint even when the room is about as dark as it’s going to get without turning off the moon, the bastard. “Well here’s the thing,” he says, his voice warm and soft around the edges. “You’re trying so hard to be something else that you’re overlooking who you already are.”

There’s a rustle as Poe turns a little, probably to face Finn even though he can’t actually see more than a vague outline, because he is a stupidly sincere jerk even when he’s mocking Finn’s pain.

“What you need to remember,” he says when Finn doesn’t respond, his voice strong and so, so sure that Finn hangs on to every word despite himself, “is that you’re the guy who woke up one morning and decided that, fuck this bullshit, you’re better than what the Order made you to be-- who realized that he couldn’t shoot at innocent people even though that’s all you’d ever been taught to do, because it just wasn’t right.” 

“You’re the guy that went back for a girl you’d barely just met because it was the right thing to do, and because she’d already become your friend, because your heart is so fucking huge that you’d do anything for her even though you knew all of four things, tops, about her. You’re the guy who tried to fight off a raging lunatic you already knew was going to kick your ass, because your friend had been hurt and you couldn’t just stand around and let her get killed.”

Poe sounds so genuine, as though he’s talking from the bottom of his heart and Finn can’t-- 

“You’re the one who was so fucking kind that he honestly couldn’t stand to see people getting hurt and you’re the one who was brave enough to want to do something about it, even if it was only to get out, even though literally nobody had ever told you to.”

Just can’t-- 

“And yeah, you helped save a bunch of people and probably a bunch of planets too while you were at it, and that makes you a hero, but that doesn’t matter because you’re also the only one who’ll actually play that fucking game with Snap, and you’ll let Jessika kick you around a bit when she’s pissed because you don’t like to see her upset. You’re the one who’ll try to get food to General Organa when you think she’s working too hard, but you’re also the one who’ll sneak it because you think she’s scary as hell and is also irritated by you. Which damned right you should, because she is. Fucking terrifying. Not the irritated part, which mostly isn’t true. Sort of. I think she exists in a constant state of irritation with like, everyone other than Chewie, ya know? So it’s not just you. I mean, I think she wants to set me on fire half the time, when I’m not flying for her I mean, and even then I think she wants to shoot me down sometimes.”

They both pretend that Finn isn’t sniffling quietly while Poe rambles, trying his damndest not to cry because of course Poe Dameron has to find a way to tell Finn exactly what he needs to hear.

“What I mean is that, you did the things that you did because of who you already are, not what you think you should be. Ya know?”

Finn stutters through breathing.

He _doesn’t_ know, actually. It’s never quite pointed out to him that way.

He also doesn’t think he’s all of that, all of what Poe makes him out to be.But, for maybe the first time since the dust settled, he thinks he can maybe get there, that he maybe wants to work for it.

“You make me want to be better,” he whispers to Poe, when he’s sure that the other man is asleep, because he may be a needy wreck but he isn’t quite bad enough to want to project that on someone else, yet.

He finds that once he’s said it, he’s able snuggle in and go to sleep.

(He never feels Poe kiss him on the forehead, never hears the affectionate, “Dumbass,” whispered into his hair.)

***

That slightly awkward, over emotional conversation seems to some sort of switch inside Finn because, after that, things start to fall a little bit more into place, to slot just a little bit better than they did before. He honestly does better more often than not, on a day to day basis and, when he occasionally slides, Poe is there to push him back uphill, kicking and screaming and crying and all. 

Things are going well or rather, they’re going about as well as can be expected, and a couple of months pass without incident, which actually has Finn just a little on edge, even if he doesn’t like to advertise it, because it’s only a matter of time before the rug is pulled out from under him and he’s going to have to run.

This sort of mindset is probably why he’s not in the least bit surprised when things change up again, when his carefully constructed bubble is burst and he’s left to flounder through the mess on his own. 

Hell, it probably says more than a few problematic things about his psyche, but he’s so used to having the ground ripped out from under him and having to roll with the punches that it’s almost refreshing to experience it again after so long without. If it weren’t for the fact that he’d gotten used to having a safe place in Poe Dameron’s room, with Poe there.

Point is, he wakes up one morning to Poe’s mournful face and a conciliatory breakfast in bed, because the man really is the best pilot in the resistance, is the leader of the best squad they’ve got, and there’s only so long he can put off being summoned before the higher ups (General Leia, mostly) start getting cranky. Two months, apparently, is that time limit.

“I’m really, really sorry,” Poe apologizes for the millionth time as he simultaneously packs and frets over how Finn is going to sleep without Poe being there to smooth things over. Which, when it’s phrased like, says even more things that Finn is uncomfortable with, like when had he started to rely on someone else to get him through _literally everything_? 

Even worse, when had he dumped so much of his garbage on Poe that Poe actually began to feel responsible for any of it? It’s not Poe’s job to fret over Finn, especially when he has better things to do, like completing missions for the organization he works for and keeping the free world in one piece. Babysitting Finn shouldn’t even be a part of that equation.

Of course, when he says as much with all of the sincerity he’s got in him, Poe rolls his eyes. 

Finn bristles despite himself. 

“I can actually take care of myself you know,” he snaps, defensive, “I was doing it for a long damned time before you came along and I can continue to do it with or without you here.” Then, when faced with Poe’s devastatingly effective hurt puppy face, “Oh come on! That’s not how I meant it!” 

He sighs and starts again, less angry this time. “I’m grateful, Poe, you have no idea how much. It means everything that you’re willing to stick around and hold my hand through all this. But you need to understand that you’re not obligated to put your life on hold just because mine’s a mess right now. You’ve got your own things you have to do and I have to be able to deal with my things without stepping on other people’s toes in the process.”

Poe just looks at Finn, quiet in contemplation because he’s too kind to snap back. “Has it ever occurred to you,” he asks after a few minutes, carefully casual as he looks somewhere to the left of Finn’s face, “that maybe I want you, how did you say it, to step on my toes? Maybe I want you to think that it’s ok for you to come to me no matter what? Maybe I want to take care of you because it makes me feel better to know that someone is? That you’re not going this alone?”

Which, ok. Finn’s always known, in a nonspecific sort of way, that Poe’s invested in his well-being. That he has literally turned his life upside down to accommodate for Finn’s needs, has given up half his room, is literally sharing a bed with Finn even with all the nightmare induced flailing and the occasional crying, points to a man who very obviously cares. But Finn has always assumed that it was a personality trait rather than anything done with him in mind-- he’s always assumed that Poe would do it for anyone, because that’s just the type of person that he is.

Apparently not.

Finn takes a moment to breathe deep and internalize this sudden and huge revelation-- that Poe is doing all of this because he wants to help Finn, that helping Finn somehow makes things better for Poe himself-- is mind blowing and oh.

“Oh,” Finn utters, voice weak.

Poe just gives him a fondly exasperated look and lightly whacks him over the head. “Yeah,” he says, “Oh. Now finish your damned breakfast. I went through hell getting it here from the mess without any spills. Do you have any idea how hard it is to dodge people when your center of gravity is centered on a rectangular piece of metal?”

No, Finn does not. But he shows his appreciation for Poe’s valiant efforts by splitting half the food with him. Granted, he also makes it a little difficult for either one of them to eat by crawling nearly into Poe’s lap, but he figures that there’s no such thing as show of gratitude too big or too small.

Besides, it doesn’t seem like Poe minds, if the arm around his waist, anchoring him in place, is any sort of indication. Finn figures that he might as well enjoy the closeness while he can. After all, Poe’s set to leave ~~him~~ tomorrow morning, and who knows when he’ll be back?

***

That night Finn dreams of Jakku, of things having gone differently, of waking up in the wreckage of their stolen TIE fighter and finding Poe dead. He dreams of never having rescued Poe at all, finding him instead just as Phasma finally has him killed. He dreams of fading smiles and a silent world with no laughter, and he cries for everything that he’s lost, even if he doesn’t understand what that is.

Poe doesn’t say anything when he gets woken up by a stray elbow to the ribs, just pulls Finn closer and keeps him there until the shaking goes away-- let’s Finn cling to him so hard that there’s bound to be bruising, and doesn’t say a word about it the next morning.

Hand to his heart, Finn has no idea what he’s done to deserve a man like this in his life, and he doesn’t care. At this point, all he wants to do is to keep him.

***

Before he leaves, Poe gives Finn three things: a bone crushing hug, a promise to come back, and one of his more recently worn sweaters.

“They say that scent is a powerful thing,” he says, oddly awkward as he fidgets a bit and looks at anyone and everything but Finn, “Maybe if you’ve got something that smells like me in bed, you’ll be able to trick your brain into thinking that I’m there and you’ll be able to get some decent sleep.”

Finn doesn’t have the heart to tell him that, while Poe generally smells nice and that the familiarity would be comforting, it’s not his scent that lulls Finn to sleep at night. It’s his heartbeat that does that. But even Finn isn’t so pathetic or so invasive that he’d ask for Poe to record it for him instead of giving him the sweater. Besides, he has a feeling that it’s actually a combination of things, and that hearing Poe’s heart won’t be the same if he can’t have the rest of him right where he always is, moonlighting as Finn’s favorite (and also only) body pillow.

Besides which, Poe absolutely means well and Finn is absolutely not going to throw that back in his face. At least, not again.

“Thanks, Poe,” he says quietly, and pretends that he’s not clutching the sweater to himself as he watches Poe walk towards the flight deck, all swagger and confidence. He wonders if it would be overkill to somehow sneak aboard, just to keep an eye on things.

Poe walks away before Finn can make up his mind. This is probably a good thing because Finn can’t be sure that he would’ve been able to convince himself to stay put.

TBC

**Author's Note:**

> part two is in the works and is hopefully better than this. someone should force me to write it. otz if it's worth continuing anyway. I've got most of the getting together parts done-- another 10k or so. but like, I need to piece it all together. OOH also, not beta'ed. Which you probably already knew. It's too late at night right now for me to read my own shit over. sorry guys v.v


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